entanglement

Consciousness as Emergent Quantum Phenomena ?

The consciousness-as-emergent-phenomena-from-quantum-mechanics thread of thought is plausible where it does not degenerate into an indistinct mystical wish-fulfillment or other trope of magical mystery tour. Quantum phenomena allow for systemic interconnection, organisational or structured dimensional degrees-of-freedom and systems-unity in ways which support reconstructing or explaining the somewhat poorly-defined, nebulous or amorphous holism of lived experience and consciousness. The mischievously unpalatable mysteries of quantum phenomena which hint at deeper unity (i.e. remote energetic and information systems-entanglement in space, and apparently also in time) are the enigmatic and partially intelligible form with which material, Cosmological unity presents us.

Singular, narrative threads of experience and their associated intellectual tools of logic and mathematics are perhaps poorly equipped to reconstruct the unity of consciousness or Cosmos. Intellect and structured volitional complexity arise from the container and context of unity but might only ever approach it asymptotically through logic; there is always room to think and explore.

Unity of consciousness, of Cosmos or any other non-trivially sophisticated, logically integrated or complex system which appears in some manner to just “hang together” as a whole is foundationally and axiomatically a paradoxical unity.

A Computational Universe ?

Can the Universe be said to be computational ? Algorithmic ? Can distantly-connected parts of a unified physical totality really manifest computation as we currently understand it ? How does time dilation and planes of simultaneity alter or influence concepts (let alone manifestations) of coherent and interconnected, cosmologically-distributed information and energy processing ? Are we resorting to computational models of the Universe because there exists something of an obligation to interpret ourselves (i.e. computational neuroscience, etc.) and our world through the filter and facilitation of our latest (and greatest) technology and its associated zeitgeist ? The sheer success and exuberant momentum of computer science is unquestionable but it seems to me, if not necessarily being a topic that should be discussed in polite company in anything other than hushed tones, that digital technology and its procedural refinement and accelerating iterations as measured on a logarithmic scale is not very likely to be a notionally teleological endpoint of technological evolution. With the discovery of the electron, it was proclaimed (by some) that all science was at an end; it appears that the only thing you should never say is never.

Discontinuous

There exists a vast discontinuity and rupture running through the middle of this world. It may in some ways be a little like the blind spot in vision which we know (although usually forget) is there but do not see because our brains and minds compensate by inventing a plausible stop-gap to obscure the perceptual, logical vacuum at the heart of things. We invent many reasons, meanings and justifications to disguise the essential underlying mystery from ourselves.

Of course, we now know that our visual processing systems do more than just compensate for that structurally inevitable data blank created where the optic nerve attaches to the eyeball, but also largely fabricate plausible and probable realities in the peripheries of vision as well. The rupture in logic and reference is (similarly) a global property, distributed non-locally across subjective cognition and collective, shared communications systems. It is not found in any one place in total, it is found in every place in partial, incomplete representation or reference. As an object of knowledge it is fundamentally problematic, easily overwritten or otherwise obscured with what we expect to see, what we would like (or prefer) to see.

This discontinuity is a function of the process and flow of Global (i.e. Holistic) information storage systems. Self-referential, self-representational – the essence of the recursion underlying this logical rupture is that of the changing process of change, of accelerating (and decelerating) rates of change and complexity aggregation (or dissemination), in some sense written and read from the broader environment in various ways. It is a system acting upon itself, self-gravitating, rotating through itself. It is logically problematic and for this reason can only ever be approached, in some sense, indirectly.

All authentic holistic and system-of-all-systems theories contain themselves and their own explanation as constitutive, reflexive elements of their own ontological justification. Even with our descriptive tools and preference for axiomatic clarity being hamstrung by such deeply recursive entanglements of system/environment (or concept/explanation) dynamics; with our epistemological eyes effectively closed in this way, we can still feel our way blindly through this enigma, qualitatively. The system of the world constitutively is this discontinuity; the meta-logical enigma and procedural self-encapsulation of ongoing axiomatic abstraction precisely is both the essential identity of the system and is what the system does. It is what it does and this is at base to act upon itself.